Marketing Roadmaps

Social media

From BOTS to BOUGHT: The “crisis” in influencer marketing

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Today, Digiday published the confessions of a former influencer describing widespread fraud in the influencer marketing space, focusing largely on bought followers on Instagram, where influencers regularly amassed followers literally overnight in order to compete for coveted fashion and beauty deals. All to meet the demand of advertisers and their agencies for scale. Reach was the de facto result. This is absolutely 100% true, I have no doubt.

It’s also not influencer marketing. We have to be REALLY careful to not throw the baby out with this admittedly nasty AF bath water.

As I wrote last week, this fraud — and it is fraud — stems from the ad industry’s relentless pursuit of scale without a similar commitment to authenticity and performance metrics.

Influencer marketing works because it is human-centered, and humans beings don’t scale neatly with algorithmic and predictable precision.

In the 90s, anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized that humans can only sustain a limited number of stable social relationships; 150 is commonly cited as the upper limit. While modern communication has changed how this dynamic works, as we are able to move more fluidly from group to group, online and off, and may participate in multiple networks of people with whom we share common interests, we should always keep Dunbar’s number in mind when thinking about how influence works. The ripple effect of a recommendation matters just as much as the initial impact. Much harder to measure of course, but just because something is hard doesn’t mean we should not strive to do it.

Influencer marketing done right is building relationships with customers over time, who serve as the advocates for your brand to their friends, fans and followers. You know and trust them. Their audience knows and trusts them. You work together to achieve a common goal. Kumbaya and all.

Influencer marketing works because we do move in and out of different groups online, and when we share a recommendation from one into another, we form a ripple on the pond. What’s been missing is way to independently assess the audience of influencers to verify that they do have the right audience. Independent of and across the platforms, independent of the agencies. It’s challenging, and even more so if you respect individual privacy rights. I’m working on some things in this space. More to come.

In the meantime, the best approach is to understand that the best results from influencer marketing don’t come from scale. They come from trusted relationships over time.

The other issue exposed in the Digiday Confession is poor measurement practices.

Reach is a delivery metric. It tells us whether we executed our social tactic successfully. It is not a performance metric. Performance is engagement with content, and your objectives dictate whether you are working toward likes, shares and comments, or driving all the way down the funnel to conversion. Reach is not a result.

The Digiday piece also shared that boosting posts, at least in this confessor’s situation, was just as fraudulent, reaching folks not even remotely in the audience target purely to shore up the numbers. This is just straight up bad practice. Boosting posts simply to increase the reach is a waste of money. You should ONLY boost your best-performing content, the content that is getting verified engagement, to expose it to a larger or different audience. Do not boost your turkeys. Let them fade away.

What about the BOTS?
The other article that caught my attention this morning was a piece on CNN about Lil Miquela, an influential CGI (computer generated image) that amassed quite a following before it was revealed that she was a CGI.

My opinion? If CGIs advocate for brands and someone is compensated for the endorsement, it is advertising, straight up, and should be disclosed. Ethically, I think it should be disclosed even if they are not doing brand or cause related work, because they are a construct, and consumers should know.

Personally, I’m not sure I love the idea of people modeling themselves after, being influenced by, robots, but as long as it is fully disclosed as CGI advertising, I don’t see why brands shouldn’t have the option to use CGI tools to deliver their message. They can dictate the message and don’t have to worry about the opinion of the CGI. Likewise if they use BOT accounts to manage message flow or respond for the brand in place of human CSRs. It’s okay as long as you tell people they are engaging with a BOT.

But CGIs and BOTs are not influencer marketing. They are simply innovations in advertising.

Digital media predictions for a post-GDPR world

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Last week, a business acquaintance made a ballsy prediction on LinkedIn for which he took a fair amount of flak. Posting a comment, I noted that his essential point was not that much of a stretch. Of course, there were nuances to the argument, but a long statement with a bunch of caveats wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or thought-provoking. Predictions have to push at the edges or people won’t pay attention. So, I figured it was time to step onto the ledge and make some predictions about the future of digital advertising. I’d love to hear what you think, agree or disagree.

1. In a post-GDPR world, targeted advertising is going to become more expensive. Not immediately. There is still a lot of confusion (some real, some manufactured) about what is required.  In the end, though, the increased costs of delivering compliant targeted audiences combined with a decrease in available inventory as consumers retract or refuse permission, will increase ad rates to premium, not programmatic, rates. I’ve been arguing this for a while and the pundits are finally admitting it. 

2. Context will be queen again. In order to reach the right audience, we will turn to content-centric, community-centric marketing tactics. In part because they ARE more effective in converting customers, but mostly because the cost differential between them and targeted/programmatic advertising won’t be so great. It will be just that much easier to take the leap of faith to try these tactics, which are still working out their success metrics (more about that in a bit.)

This is the opportunity for niche publishers and brands to create content for their micro-audiences that both provides the necessary context for ads and sponsored content and creates a relationship and value exchange in which the consumer is more likely to give permission for the specific use of personal data. As an example, Pepper & Wits, a new content site for women 45+ who are navigating menopause is owned by P&G; we certainly should expect sponsored content and other brand outreach but the primary purpose is to offer value to the consumer and targeted context, not targeted ads.

3. “If you aren’t paying, you’re the product” is a cliché whose days are numbered. Consumers will start to care about privacy. It has been a LONG time coming, but I truly believe that consumers are finally understanding the true cost of free digital services/platforms, and are going to want real value in exchange for the right to use their personal data. “Legitimate business interest” is not going to be sufficient to use a person’s data without permission. Publishers and brands who are offering great content and building relationships with consumers will have a far better chance of obtaining (and retaining) permission.

4. Things are about to get more competitive. Facebook and Google are vulnerable in this new advertising economy. They aren’t in danger by any means, but their models are based on scale, not relationships. They have no friends, just users. This opens up a sliver of opportunity for niche content publishers to create better experiences for consumers and pick off a little wedge of the pie. The duopoly will still get (more than) its fair share, but they will be handicapped in delivering their biggest strength, targeted audiences at scale, so the little guys can dart in and nab their share in areas where Facebook and Google cannot play effectively, content and community. Niche publishers, bloggers, even brands who can make the long haul investment. And Amazon. Amazon already does a better job of community than either Facebook or Google, is nipping at their heels and has a distinct e-commerce advantage. I also predict Reddit will make a strong play for the “community ad dollar.”

5. All of this will drive innovation. Certainly, in ad tech to manage consent, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Folks are already working on challenges like better measurement and attribution models that assign value properly and proportionally to all the players in the value chain, not just the last click. This is crucial for branded content, video, social media and influencer marketing.

Community is also getting some attention. Two start-ups doing interesting things to connect brands with consumers: Social Data Collective and Suzy. Suzy (AskSuzy.com) is the evolution of social media and influencer business Crowdtap. It helps advertisers make and manage meaningful connections with customers by offering them access to its super panel of consumers. Social Data Collective has a slightly different approach; it asks consumers to share personal data with the brands they love in exchange for products/services.

But I think even more interesting things are on the horizon. For example, aggregators of consumer information that validate consumer audiences and can compare them across properties, including blogs and YouTube and all the other places that community will form, not just sites big enough to register on comScore. Audience data all the way down the long tail to validate that the context IS delivering the right audience. This “data hole” has been the bête noire of the influencer marketing business, but there wasn’t a strong enough incentive to solve it, when advertisers could just buy targeted audiences cheaply. To sell content and community as the right context, you need the metrics to prove that you’ve got the goods. It’s coming. I am certain. And it won’t need PII (personally identifiable information) to do it.

We also need tools to give consumers control over their privacy across platforms and processors. Right now, if you think someone has compromised your private data or is using it without permission, good luck tracking it down. Blockchain is the best bet for creating this privacy audit trail. Someone is certainly working on this already. In fact, if you know who, I’d love to chat with them!!!

So there you have it. My predictions for the digital media industry. If you need me, I’ll just be out here teetering on the ledge.

P.S. If you want to check out the prediction of my business acquaintance, you can find it on LinkedIn.

Customer-Centric Marketing. An idea whose time has FINALLY come?

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Activating the passion that consumers have for the brands they love and turning them into your advocates is the secret sauce to identifying and converting new customers as well as increasing the loyalty of retained customers.

This simple concept, customer-centric marketing, has been the basis of my work for more than 20 years. It’s why I embraced blogs and then social media so wholeheartedly. It’s why I advocate so strongly for transparency, authenticity and disclosure, because they foster trust, the currency of social interaction. Online and off. It’s why I have embraced GDPR and other privacy initiatives for the promise they offer to build strong relationships with customers based on a balanced, informed value exchange for personal data.

Customer-centric marketing is also an idea that is often given lip-service, but not nearly as often embedded in our corporate DNA. We talk a good game about building relationships with customers, incorporating consumer feedback, building products and services that delight them. But when it comes time to implement the marketing plan, we use the language of war. We target audiences. We deploy tactics. We execute plans. We profile the customers into personas who are expected to follow prescribed patterns of behavior.

Which is fine, to a point. It would be foolish not to aim your marketing efforts at the audience most likely to buy. But our language and our tactics both tend to dehumanize our customer, to the point that we forget they are people and not just impressions or clicks or conversions or profiles. Taken to the extreme, and make no mistake modern digital marketing exists on the very edge of this extreme, our marketing isn’t just automated, it’s robotic, and not in a good way.

More human tactics like social marketing, influencer engagement, event marketing and even branded content restore the balance and remind us that customers aren’t simply segmented groups of purchasing behaviors, they are people. Living, breathing people who love our products and services, and are simply waiting to be asked. While these tactics are very often more effective, they are nearly always more expensive than digital advertising which uses programmatic buying and consumer targeting to reach the right audiences cheaply, at scale.

The good news, for advocates of more human centered approaches (like me), is that GDPR promises to reduce that financial gap. The SUPPLY for targeted ads will be diminished when (inevitably) publishers can’t document permission or consumers withdraw permission. It also will be more expensive to deliver an audience targeted PROPERLY with personal data. Both scenarios will increase CPMs for the remaining inventory. More on these and other scenarios in Marketing Week.

Certainly, contextual targeting will pick up the slack for digital advertising. There also will still be a market for premium permission-targeted audiences. Niche publishers in particular have tremendous incentive to develop a strong value proposition, both for their content and in exchange for the use of personal data for targeting. I wrote about this last fall.

As the cost gap closes between digital advertising at scale and more engaging tactics like influencer marketing and branded content, marketers will have incentive to shift budget to customer-centric marketing, where relevance can be proven by our interest and engagement with content and brands, not simply implied by our browsing history or past purchasing behavior.

It’s then up to us as marketers to create the compelling, customer-centric campaigns that engage consumers and convert prospects to buyers.

I’m game!

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Additional Reading on GDPR. Tick Tock. Less than 3 weeks to go. 

Is Facebook vulnerable?

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For the first time since its very early years, Facebook is vulnerable. The Cambridge Analytica mess highlighted an important but oft-overlooked fact about Facebook’s business model. Facebook’s business is data, monetized through advertising, not community or social networking. Social networking and community are merely the means by which it gathers and aggregates data and delivers advertising.

This was easy enough to forget in the feature wars and fight for online social dominance, but the public now is generally far more aware than ever that if you aren’t paying, you are the product. It’s also now clear that Facebook’s business models skirt very close to violating consumer privacy, if not outright violations. When working as designed, by the way, not through some breach or hack into the system.

While Facebook has announced changes in the face of governmental scrutiny in the US and Europe following the Cambridge Analytica revelations, the response still seems pretty superficial. Lipservice, not customer service.

As a result, while I wouldn’t sign a death certificate for the platform any time soon, consumer trust in Facebook has seriously eroded, and it isn’t doing such a terrific job at getting it back. At least so far. I’m not sure they can. So many of the problems are built into the very infrastructure. This leaves an opening for competitors.

Others agree.

When asked by NY Mag whether a new platform could get a seat at the table, Dan McComas, former SVP of product at Reddit, said:

I think it’s absolutely possible, but it takes a couple of major factors. I think a start-up needs to think about the monetization and how it can work with the users instead of against the users. I think they need to figure out the right funding mechanisms and incentive structures that also work toward the users. I think they need to have the right product team in place to focus on users.”

Angel investor and entrepreneur Jason Calcanis has put some skin in the game, announcing via his newsletter this weekend a competition called the LAUNCH Open Book Challenge to find Facebook’s replacement. Seven winners will receive $100K investments from the LAUNCH Incubator. In his newsletter, he stated he is looking to fund a social network that is good for society, that will:

– Respect and protect consumer’s privacy
– Respect and protect our democracy from bad actors
– Respect and protect the truth, by stopping the spread of misinformation
– Not try and manipulate people by making them addicted to the service
– Protect freedom of speech, while curbing abuse (not easy!)”

If you’d like to follow along, or think you might like to enter, details are at openbookchallenge.com. The competition is open to existing projects as well as new ideas/paradigms, but ideas alone are not enough. The main criteria for selecting the semifinalists and the eventual winners will be ability to execute.

Reddit, Snapchat and perennial second place finisher Twitter are also in the hunt, but they may have too much baggage (and their own privacy violations) to prevail.

Something will succeed Facebook. It’s not a matter of IF, only of WHEN. Right now, WHEN feels a whole lot closer than it has before.

Facebook has no friends

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Mark Zuckerberg just spent two days in front of Congress, explaining, justifying, defending his company and its business practices.

I continue to find it fascinating that the company that develops the tool that so many brands, individuals and even public entities rely on to build and nurture their communities, neglected to foster its own. Facebook has no friends. We use it, we run our ads on it, we publish our news on it. But we don’t like it.

Which is why, now in its moment of need, Facebook is more or less twisting in the wind. Other publishers, other platforms have committed similar offenses. But in the court of public opinion, Facebook will pay for the crime.

Contrast this to Apple which as a company is equally as arrogant. I say this typing on one of my 5 Apple devices so know that I have drink the Macintosh-flavored Koolaid deep. Apple however always — well before social media — understood the value of community and built its marketing strategy from the get-go around cultivating evangelists. We love the brand. So much so that we forgive an awful lot. Lousy overpriced computers in the late 90s. Batteries that drain far too fast. And we pay a premium to use the thing we love.

It has always been true that if you are not paying, you’re the product.

We now are starting to understand the true cost of using Facebook.

This is the opportunity for a viable replacement to make its move, something that a year ago, I would have said was foolhardy. And no, I am not predicting the fall of Facebook. That is ridiculous. But it is vulnerable.

Reddit, long mostly off limits to commercialization, has recently relaxed its stance about corporate conversation on the platform. Ditto Pinterest, which has extended the hand of friendship to publishers of late. Snapchat, still not dead even though Ms. Jenner claims to no longer use the service. There is a little more room at the inn right now for smart players that figure out how to reconcile the competing demands of commercial results and consumer privacy.

We are finally, after 20 years, at a point where consumer data privacy in the US matters. To everyone, not just a handful of folks. We’ve also realized, I think, that even though regulation may stifle innovation, the cost of not protecting privacy through regulation is too steep. I personally wish we could rely on tech companies to police themselves and protect their consumers. Cambridge Analytica, and all the other extant examples for which the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica mess also serves as proxy, proves that we cannot.

In Europe, privacy is considered a fundamental human right. Its data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulations, codify consumers’ ownership of their personal data as well as the obligations companies that use or control consumer data have to that consumer.

Our attitude toward privacy in the US is a little different. It is largely viewed in terms of individual rights vis a vis governmental authority. It is not a fundamental right, and our privacy laws such as they are, reflect that.

Nevertheless online data regulation in the US now seems inevitable. Senators Markey and Blumenthal have already drafted a bill, and these are smart guys who have been around the online privacy debate for years. Markey in particular. They know the dangers of over-regulating technology.

Interesting times.